Blue Woman Burning--, page 18
“I realized,” she told Terry, “that I am doing to you what Ovid has always done to me. I don’t want to pass that along. I promise you I will never hit you again.” And to her knowledge she hadn’t. She was proud of that memory. It made her feel like a good sister.
Seized by uncharacteristic loquacity, she told Jacob a string of memories, like sitting on the lawn with Terry in Chile, looking for four-leaf clovers. She found them all the time. He wanted to find them, too. In that one day, she had found four. She was touched when he asked her to teach him how to find them. But after a few minutes, he exclaimed, “I can’t find any,” yanked at the grass and threw the blades back down.
“Just keep looking. When you see four leaves together that turn out to be a mistake, it means you’re about to find a real one. I don’t know why it works that way.” But he didn’t have the knack.
She’d spent little time with him the year they overlapped in high school, but when she went to college, she had been so involved in trying to maintain her own sanity, she hadn’t paid much attention when the report of his expulsion from school came. As she talked to Jacob, she realized she’d been a terrible sister, almost as narcissistic as her mother.
She vaguely remembered coming back home from college one Christmas vacation. Walter told her that Ovid and Terry were having fights, and Terry was smoking and drinking a lot. He asked her to speak with him to see if she could figure out what was troubling him. She used the Socratic method with Terry, questioning him closely, trying to get him to explore the root causes of his fights with Ovid and his drug use. She sat across the dinner table questioning Terry, and he answered. Maybe she had been confrontational or made some assertions about his character and motivation. It was odd how murky her memory was. It was only five years ago. She thought she was being observant, hard-hitting, truth-seeking—she thought she was seeing his self-deceptions and asked him questions that would make him see them, too. Ovid who had been silently listening, interrupted and dressed her down. Ovid accused her of being arrogant, ignorant, intrusive, self-aggrandizing, and he insisted she leave Terry alone. He said she was trying to step out of the natural hierarchy. She didn’t remember Terry taking a side in that fight. He just faded into the background as she and Ovid picked up verbal swords and went into full combat.
“Terry is a mystery to me, really,” Fallon said. “I don’t think I knew who he was as a boy, and when he grew up, I knew him even less. He bluffed a lot. To act stronger and less caring than he actually was.”
“So, what did you say you were hoping to gain by finding him?”
“I don’t know,” Fallon said, surprised that she had thought so little about it. “I’ve sort of been on autopilot. I just need to find him. He needs to know that Ovid is—dead.”
“Makes sense.”
Jacob slowed down, shifted to low gear, and turned left onto a dirt road just past a small, flat building that said “Herb’s” in lime-green letters.
“I’m sorry if I sounded hostile back there when you said everything happens for a reason,” Fallon said.
“You didn’t sound hostile. You were honest. I like that in a person.”
They passed a sign for “Arroyo Hondo” (deep valley) and followed a dirt road along a rocky stream.
“I had a friend, once, who miscarried. People told her everything happens for a reason, and it made it sound like she had brought it on herself,” Fallon explained.
“Yeah, I can see how she would feel that way,” Jacob nodded, smiling. “Once I was cleaning up the shed, and I pulled a board away from the wall. A spider fell to the ground, leaving her egg sac behind. She scrambled to get back to them, but I moved the board with the egg sac still stuck to it. It occurred to me that life is like that. Sometimes huge forces beyond our ken act on us. We don’t know the reason why these things happen, and sometimes the reasons have nothing to do with us. But there’s always a reason.”
They passed a few shacks that were a mixture of adobe, tin, and board.
“When you put it that way…” Fallon said.
“I believe that we are part of a larger design that we can’t fully understand,” Jacob said, looking out at the red dirt that resembled a hot scalp between parted hair. “I don’t think the universe is punishing us when bad things happen. I think we do best, though, when we seek to be in harmony.”
“I’ll buy that,” Fallon said. He’d said just the right thing, and it flicked a switch inside of her that suffused her with warmth for this man, the kind that would last forever.
At an indeterminate place in the shrubs that lined the road, he turned left onto a stony driveway and pulled up to a round adobe house that blended into the land. White teepees gleamed in the upper brush, pale yellow hills humped beyond blue, boney peaks she later found out were called Sangre de Cristo, Blood of Christ.
“Home again, home again, jiggity jig,” Jacob said.
20
BREAKDOWN
“Welcome to Buffalo Hill.”
The compound had been a famous commune once, Jacob told her. In fact, shortly after he had met and married Kaela, he scrapped law school to come and live here for a few years when it was still running. The filmmakers of Easy Rider wanted to film it here, but the commune turned them down, so the filmmakers ended up constructing a replica. The commune died out eventually, and the few that stayed behind were busy selling off plots of land piece by piece to support their junk habit when Jacob and Kaela bought it. Now they ran it as a bed-and-breakfast and sort of halfway house.
Next to the front door, a man hunched over something, baring his reddish, stubbly head to the world. Various patches of gardens surrounded the house, some obviously vegetable patches that had finished their growing season and been turned under, others still grew spinach and herbs. Two red hibiscus shrubs bloomed on either side of the door. Ivy climbed a trellis over the door.
“Hallo,” the man shouted out cheerfully, grinning widely, his voice cracking with delight. His eyes had the curved look that comes with Down syndrome.
“Hello, Sammy,” Jacob called as he stepped out of the truck.
“Hallo,” Sammy called again.
Jacob introduced Fallon, and Sammy hailed her again.
“Hello,” she said back. “What—”
“Hallo!” he shouted again.
“Hi, what—”
“Hallo!” he grinned still wider. Jacob chuckled.
“What have you got there?” she finally got out.
“A stick,” Sammy said, holding it up joyfully. It was marred by unintelligible hack marks.
“He generally works on those until there is nothing left. But if you stop him at the right time, they can be quite beautiful.” Jacob pointed to the neat rows of hieroglyphically carved sticks pressed into the adobe surrounding the kitchen window. “Sammy, do you know where Odin and Teal are?”
“In the tree, Od is,” he laughed then looked confused. “Teal is…” He brightened, “I never know where Teal is.”
“Well, this lady’s car broke down. I’m gonna need Od to take a look at it. He’s gonna need your help.”
“Oh, I fix cars good!” Sammy said.
Fallon looked doubtfully at Jacob.
“Don’t worry,” Jacob said, turning away from the house and gesturing for her to follow. “He’s just the helper. Passes Od and me tools. The real magic worker is in that tree over there,” he pointed halfway down the driveway to what she guessed was a willow tree with a large trunk and tiny green leaves surrounded by sweet, waving grass. She followed Jacob to the base of the tree.
“Od,” Jacob called up into the branches, “I want you to come down here and meet Fallon.”
Fallon saw nothing in the darkness of the branches until the trunk appeared to move up high. Two blue eyes burned down at her, strangely light through the shadows.
“You man or beast?” demanded a voice from the shadows.
Fallon smiled. “I’m definitely not a man, and if there are only two choices, that must make me a beast.”
Jacob smiled at her answer and looked at the ground.
“All right, then.” Od jumped down and sized her up. He was a slender man just about her height with long, brown hair about the same color as her hair, capped by a blue bandana. He picked up her wrist and held it next to his own, comparing. Viking runes similar to the hatch marks on Sammy’s sticks tattooed his forearm. Two lines of gray streaked his beard.
“Are you sure you’re not one of those brainwashed zombie servants of the plutocracy?” he said, turning his head to the side and fixing her with his right eye. His eyes were blue with white rings like the spiral eyes children draw to indicate that someone is dizzy from being hit on the head.
Fallon’s reality did one of its usual shifts to accommodate his reality.
“I only talk to beasts. Those who are in danger of being lost to this world,” he added.
“Fallon was definitely a little bit lost when I found her,” Jacob said.
“Then she’s lucky, because La Loba will teach her something of the soul,” Od answered without skipping a beat.
“La Loba is a folktale figure from this region,” Jacob explained.
“She has many names,” said Od. “La Loba, Wolf Woman, La Huesera, Bone Woman. She collects bones of lost creatures and sings them back to life.”
“Thank you,” Jacob said. “I wanted Fallon to hear that story. Now Od, Fallon’s car is gonna need some major engine work. Think you can handle that for her?”
“What do you need a car for? Do you know a car puts a pound of carbon monoxide into the air for every gallon it burns?”
“Well, I—” Fallon tried to defend herself.
“Do you know how much a pound of vapor is?”
“I know. I—”
“Have you seen Teal,” Jacob broke in gently, “since you’ve been on raven watch?”
“Raven watch?” Fallon questioned.
Jacob put his arm around Od’s narrow shoulders and hugged him. “Odin is the Norse god who brought writing to his people. He is served by two ravens, Hugin and Munin, thought and memory. Sometimes my friend here is the god and sometimes he’s the raven. So where did you say Teal was?”
“She’s around,” Od said softly, looking at the horizon. “I saw her following the cat again over the mesa. I think she went to the hot springs.”
“Come on in and meet Kaela,” Jacob told Fallon.
Though Kaela was in her early sixties, she looked younger. She was dark skinned, with rich black hair and only a few tinsel streaks here and there. Her features were almost perfectly symmetrical, balanced by delicate internal geometry. Her glossy, straight hair was gathered by a simple barrette at the nape of her neck. When she stretched out her hands in greeting, Fallon noticed that her palms were smooth, pale, and marked by only a few deep lines. She grasped Fallon’s hand with both of hers and smiled broadly, her white teeth flashing in contrast to her dark skin.
“Welcome, welcome. I was just starting to prepare dinner. Come. Keep me company.”
Fallon took a moment to absorb the large, round living space, all stuccoed. The thick walls had a ledge for sitting all the way around the room. Round timbers supported by posts divided the ceiling like a pie. Woven pillows and rugs dotted the room. A few skylights made the room airy. She followed Kaela into the next round room, the kitchen, with a butcher-block island, an industrial grade iron stove, and two refrigerators.
“Can I help?”
“Please. You can be my sous-chef.”
Kaela pulled fresh herbs from one basket and onions from another and placed them on the table along with a knife.
As Fallon chopped cilantro and garlic and their scents billowed around her, she questioned Kaela about their lives at Buffalo Hill.
Kaela’s parents, Fallon learned, had come from what she called the “better part” of New Delhi, India, but she had been raised in the United States since the age of ten, so she spoke English with round vowels and good enunciation. It was not quite an American accent, but not quite anything else either. Jacob and Kaela met late in their lives when Jacob quit his dry-cleaning business and—stirred by the revolution of the Sixties— entered law school thinking he could use a law degree to fight for justice. Disillusioned by the law, Jacob joined the commune in the early Seventies. The commune, too, proved disillusioning, but left them both craving a cohesive community. They moved into town, where Kaela, with a degree in counseling, worked for the county mental health office, and Jacob took a job at a home for the mentally disturbed. Finally, when the commune went up for sale, they managed to scrape together enough money to buy it to run as a bed-and-breakfast, while also making a bid at self-sufficiency.
“Jacob has a stronger mothering instinct than I do,” Kaela said, “though mine is not small, by any means.” She laughed, and her teeth flashed brilliant as she glanced out a thick-silled window at Jacob shoveling compost into the garden. “I suppose it comes from being raised alone by his mother. We adopted Sammy, and ever since we moved back here, people just come and find us.” She removed the lid from a pot of saffron rice and looked up at Fallon as the puff of steam escaped. “Besides hosting the occasional tourist or artist retreat, we take in people who need a home for a while. Some of them disappear as quietly as they appeared.” She carefully replaced the lid and turned off the flame. “Od and Teal have been with us for several years now. Od, in American culture ,would probably be considered schizophrenic, though, and we are helping him manage with medication and therapy. Teal is a wild one. Never speaks, wanders around alone all day. More like a cat than a person.”
As Fallon chopped and mixed the ingredients Kaela set before her, she watched Kaela move with a dancer’s precision from stove to sink to counter, her gestures light, quick, and fluid.
“I admire that you two have devoted your lives to helping others,” Fallon said.
Kaela’s brows came together briefly, then smoothed out. “I don’t think of it that way…as helping…others.” She tipped red, yellow, and brown spices into a bowl and mixed them with cream. “In India, children belong to the whole village. The children run in and out of the house, up and down the street. Every adult is a parent. When they are outside, there are outside parents, and when they are inside, no matter whose house it is, there are inside parents. It’s just a way of life. Everyone belongs to everyone,” she said, flicking her palms to the ceiling, green bits of herbs flying off her fingertips.
How different that was from the way she had been raised, Fallon thought, where everyone cared for Ovid and Eustacia, and nothing ever came back. Shame immediately pricked her for having such a thought. Of course, Eustacia and Ovid had bestowed many gifts just by doing what they did. Ovid’s bees, orchids, and hydroelectric plans. Eustacia taught them about the stars and the atoms. They both had filled her life with wonder, and all she did was resent it. She should be more like Kaela, beautiful, wise, generous . . . balanced.
“I heard somewhere that in the Kabbalah, that’s the highest form of giving,” Fallon said, “where you don’t know you are giving, and the receiver doesn’t know they are getting.”
“I like that.” Kaela nodded, crinkling her brows in thought as she checked a recipe.
“The lowest form is when you know you are giving, and the receiver knows they are getting. In the middle is when you know you are giving, but the receiver doesn’t know they are getting. And you make sure not to tell them, either.”
“Is that what you do?”
Fallon snorted, thinking of that Christmas episode with Terry when she had tried to advise him. “More often, you think you are giving this great gift, and the receiver sees it as a pain in the ass. ”
Kaela laughed. “Now that happens all the time in my family. When my father and mother come to visit and try to give me advice!” She laughed again. “After twenty years here, they sold their business for a good profit and returned to New Delhi. They could never accept American ways. Whenever they come back, they make sure to let me know how profoundly disturbed they are by how American I am. Meanwhile, when I go to town, people still ask me where I’m from. When I tell them I’m American, they say, ‘No, but where are you really from?’”
“They probably think of it as a compliment. A way of expressing interest in you.”
“Yeah, but it feels more like they’re saying the only people who could possibly be American are white,” she chuckled richly. “Don’t even talk to me about the Native Americans. Imagine when these invaders ask them what country they came from!”
“My ancestors on my mother’s side are pre-Revolutionary American, but I spent most of my childhood in different countries, so I don’t feel that American. I have all these European and South American traits.”
“There’s a term for that, you know.”
“Oh?”
“It’s called ‘third culture.’ We are a little bit from here and a little bit from somewhere else.”
“Or a little bit from nowhere,” Fallon said, fatigue momentarily dizzying her. “But having a name for it makes it somewhere, doesn’t it?” She brightened.
“Exactly.” Kaela cracked the lid on the rice again, and fragrant steam filled the room. “Okay,” she said with purpose, brushing her hands together with an all-done gesture. “Would you mind going outside and calling the others to dinner? I’ll set the table.”
